The books / Swarming and Increase / chapter 12 of 15
The bait hive
All chapters
- Reproduction, not disaster
- The four triggers
- Swarm cells and supersedure cells
- Egg to capped in eight or nine days
- Why seven days
- Reading the signs
- Give them room first
- Cutting cells is not a plan
- Pagden's artificial swarm
- The Demaree method
- The nucleus split
- The bait hive
- After the swarm
- Growing an apiary for nothing
- Laying room is not storage
A bait hive turns a swarm you never owned into a free colony.
A small box, roughly the volume of a single deep brood box, with a strip of old dark comb or a few drops of lemongrass oil inside to mimic the scent of an established nest, is enough to attract the scout bees a swarm sends out before it commits to a new home.
Placement matters more than the box itself: scouts favor a spot with:
- some height off the ground
- some shelter
- a clear flight path, often at the edge of a tree line rather than in the open
Set bait hives out before swarm season starts, since scouts are searching in exactly the weeks your own colonies are deciding whether to swarm, and check them once the season is underway.